The Quest for Meaning in Learning -- Kal Victor

The academic environment here at Yeshivat Maaleh Gilboa is like none I’ve ever experienced.  It’s one that is propelled on all accounts by sheer force of will; there are no tests, no punishments, no rewards, only the drive to continue to learn.  Here, Torah learning is l’shma, literally “for its name,” for its own sake entirely.  What this means is that students totally submerge themselves into texts for the sake of engaging tradition in dialogue, and the learning itself becomes its own reward in the sense that the process of absorbing knowledge is just as essential as the end result, if not more so.

To return to a theme from my first piece from a few months ago, I think this ethos can be carried over, and it is here at the Yeshiva, to all realms of learning.  Learning with an agenda—seeking out facts while ignoring others, selectively choosing messages—can extremely limit and devalue the process of learning.  Sources must first be understood on their own terms, and when you attempt to learn from them, you must attempt to learn within the comprehensive mindset of the author, not to simply approach the text as it makes sense within your own personal framework.  For example, the word “holy” or “modest” can conceivably mean something entirely different to a Greek-influenced philosopher living in 12^th century Ottoman-controlled Egypt, than to my Western, 21^st century, post-modern ears.  It’s just barely beginning to sink into my learning, though, as obvious as it sounds, that Kal Victor and Maimonides view the world in radically different ways, and that those differences can’t be ignored when they intersect. 

The question of how to proceed in my studies with this newfound realization starting to take root in my mind, is still something I am wrestling with.  Rabbi Elisha Ancelovis, one of the Rabbis here who teaches Halakhic theory to the Americans, someone who is an important proponent and architect at Maale Gilboa of the type of learning I’ve discussed above, might answer that question by telling me to begin by first understanding what it was like to live in Spain and Egypt during Rambam’s lifetime by studying the popular culture and language of those locales.  Then, of course, you can begin to dissect, decipher, and absorb Rambam’s philosophy as it presents itself in his book, the Mishneh Torah, (a work of Halakha le’maaseh—Halakhic rulings meant to be the final, action-producing word in an argument), thereby understanding what his conception of an ideal life looks like, intellectually enmeshing yourself within both Rambam’s theoretical world and the reality in which he conceived it. This way of leaning is really the same fusion of experience and Torah I alluded to in my prior blog.  Rav Elisha’s approach is one that necessitates both emotional and intellectual investment in texts; it necessitates empathy, understanding, and the desertion of one’s comfort zone.  This is the learning that God wants the Israelites to undergo as slaves who become free, a learning that demands the melding of history and future, the means and the ultimate goal, as Rav Yehuda Gilad so aptly put it in his parsha class on Bo. 

I just finished learning in chevruta with my friend, Brad Goldstein Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man.  While there are many ideas the Rav puts forth that I don’t identify with, the book is replete with rich and provocative insights into Halakha.  In it, Rav Soloveitchik articulates a similar idea about the timeless transcendence of the Divine law.  To me, the Rav beautifully encapsulates what it means to learn and experience simultaneously, just as Rav Elisha’s approach would inspire one to do, just as the Torah itself inspires us by its very nature—with its laws and narrative, Halakha le’maaseh and agadata (legends or stories in the Talmud), with its indissoluble, concurrent call to action and call to study.  The Rav writes as follows:

The whole thrust of the various commandments of remembrance set forth in the Torah—for example, the remembrance of the Exodus, the remembrance (according to Nachmanides) of the revelation at Mount Sinai…, the remembrance of the Sabbath day (through the recitation of Kiddush), the remembrance of Amalek—is directed toward the integration of these ancient events into man’s time consciousness. The Exodus from Egypt, the divine revelation on Mount Sinai, the creation of the world, all are transformed into an integral part of the concept of man’s present consciousness, into a powerful, direct experience…The infinite past enters into the present moment.  The fleeting evanescent moment is transformed into eternity…Not only the infinite past, but also the infinite future, that future in which their gleams the reflection of the image of eternity, also the splendor of the eschatological vision, arise out of the present moment, fleeting as a dream.  Temporal life is adorned with the crown of everlasting life.

While this all makes sense to me on paper, and while I’ve been attempting to adopt Rav Elisha’s leaning methodology in many scenarios, I couldn’t help but still be perturbed by the fact that some of my learning hasn’t provided the type of real meaning I feel compelled to seek.  I had a few discussions with some of my Rabbis recently about the difficulty of processing my learning and overcoming that same feeling of self-distraction I wrote about in part one of this blog series.  Much of what they said, coupled with my own thoughts and other texts, has really helped me define how I want to go about tackling this dilemma.  The discussions about education almost always bled into discussions about meaning in Halakha.  Although all of my conversations were intended to address only one topic, both subjects always came up, and that is no coincidence. 

The first teacher I spoke to was Rav Bigman.  Rav Bigman, in his typical fashion, put things into words that I had been desperately trying to articulate myself, as well as pointed out the things, oftentimes simple and obvious, that I had overlooked.  I won’t go into our entire discussion here, but I’ll share some of details that really struck me.  Rav Bigman is a strong proponent of Yeshiva learning as a means to glean insight into standards of morality and ethical behavior.  I told Rav Bigman that while I could see such a connection in learning about commandments such as hashavat aveida (returning a lost object), it was hard for me to detect the linkage with morality and ethical behavior when puzzling over the minutiae of Halakha—the nitty-gritty detail, which seems to be at the forefront of the learning enterprise for many people.  After first criticizing the obsession over minutiae that has seemed to pervade the Halakhic community, Rav Bigman proceeded to explain his views on learning Torah and living a Halakhic lifestyle—two inextricable parts of the broader whole of religious meaning for observant Jews—by using a fascinating metaphor.  Rav Bigman compared Halakha to a play he had attended in his childhood, where the audience was called up to the stage to join in and improvise with the players.  While I’m not entirely sure what he intended by this (I’m having a follow-up conversation soon, hopefully), I read into it what made sense to me, and I was left with a fascinating and profound insight into the world of Halakha.  The metaphor expressed, to me, that Halakha is a comprehensive lifestyle where decisions are made by the “professionals” (sages and rabbis) within a traditional (rehearsed, if you will) framework, but at any given time, every individual is asked to jump in, participate, and improvise, ensuring that the decisions made are relevant and palatable to his or her own sensibilities and to those of the community at large.  I proceeded to ask him about what happens when someone doesn’t necessarily find meaning in the Halakhic lifestyle, when someone can’t find it relevant to their lives and, therefore, can’t seem to connect to it.  His answer was twofold.  His first point was that the Halakhic lifestyle is just that, a lifestyle, and it can only resonate when one is immersed within it.  It is a framework in which your understanding of the world and the system itself can only be full when you live it, when it is a part of your daily thoughts and actions.  His second point was that how you relate to the Halakhic system is not based on one concrete ideological decision, but rather contingent upon everything from the different phases in your life to your current mood.  He gave an example of how meaning associated with Halachic observance is likely to shift with one’s personal contexts, e.g. how a father might relate to Shabbat observance in a dramatically different way than, say, a student.

His message was supplemented by the words of some of my other teachers, as well.  I spoke to Rav Meir Rubenstein, my Ram (Rav and moreh, teacher) for morning seder, about how he relates to limud Torah, Talmud specifically, as it has been the hardest area of study for me to connect to personally.  He provided a different answer to my question about the seemingly inordinate focus on pilpul (literally meaning pepper, the word denotes, often with a negative connotation, a type of hairsplitting in Talmudic study) at the expense of the broader ideals and ideas behind it.  He quoted Rav Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief Rabbi of the British mandate of Palestine, who said “ba’katon yesh gadol,” literally “in that which is small there is [something] big.”  For Rav Meir, the act of learning, the act of wracking your brains over even the smallest detail, is both a symbolic and a very real gesture.  When we immerse ourselves in learning, focusing even on the micro aspects of Halakha, we’re forging a complete, all encompassing awareness, a macro-consciousness where every detail is attuned to a larger significance in that it is a thread woven with countless others to create a rich tapestry, a Halakhic mindset and way of life. 

I also spoke to Rav Yossi Slotnick, who has always been there to talk to when I’ve been struggling with something, whether it was waking up on time or finding a personal connection to Talmud study.  For him, the study of Talmud and its commentators is the chance to engage with some of the most intelligent thinkers and Halakhists of all time and stand as their equal, in a partnership to reach the larger Halakhic truth, as well as to simply engage in a rigorous, inter-generational intellectual ping-pong match, which has its own merits beyond a search for Halakha le’maaseh. 

I even got a chance to speak to Rabbi Saul Berman and his wife Shellee, two of my friends and mentors from my community in New York, who were visiting Israel and took the time to see me in Jerusalem.  Rabbi Berman’s approach to learning Talmud was one in which Talmud functions as a sort of mental training, a way to condition your mind to sort out problems in a manner where it can identify key issues and priorities, learn to subsume details within the broader categories they reflect, and extract lessons from stories.  Rabbi Berman explained how this type of thinking is also very useful for litigating in secular courts, for tackling the broader existential issues that tend to become overwhelming and hazily defined (as in my case), and for identifying the ethical or moral imperatives that underlie both Halakhic and secular law.

I think that all of the above opinions, although different from one another in many ways, reflect the need I discussed primarily in the first part of the blog to find meaning in both the ambits of Torah study and life, and the profound connection the two share.  This was all put into new perspective after our Yeshiva visited the Charedi and Chassidic city of Bnei Brak to spend a Shabbat in that quite special environment.  Throughout the weekend, a theme that underscored nearly every Dvar Torah and presentation we heard, was that the desire to learn Torah was both the beginning and the end of Jewish life, the ultimate goal and the foundational assumption of Jewish existence.  While this might sound, like a lofty and  beautiful sentiment (and in some ways it is, in my opinion), I think there is something deeply flawed in a philosophy of learning that precludes the type of experience where the lessons learned are actualized, challenged, and refined within the real world.  The Jewish lifestyle, in my mind, demands openness and interaction with the world at large, where Torah doesn’t remain exclusively in the beit midrash, but is brought out to engage with every facet of life, to enhance learning and living, to instill ethical behavior and meaningful ideas into everything.  While they saw the call to learn Torah as a call to forsake everything else, sealing themselves in an insular community that exists to ensure that no “distractions” pervade and detract from learning, I believe the call to learn Torah is a call to bring the divine will down to earthly reality, as well as elevate our earthly existence and knowledge to a holier plain.  But these transcendent ideals don’t exist in a vacuum, they are deeply enmeshed with our own human reality—our needs, concerns, and morality.

A friend and I ate lunch at an exceedingly hospitable Charedi family’s home.  The meal ended and the host made a grand announcement that for me was bittersweet.  He explained how wonderful it was to see two American Jews who are going to learn with goyim in university (his daughters had asked us what goyim look like at an earlier point in the meal), who still cherished the same niggunim (traditional, wordless melodies), the same weekly Torah portion, and the same grace after meals.  Although a beautiful, hopeful observation, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was all we shared—texts and history, and not much else. 

As I’ve understood it, the notion of a willfully secluded community is aberrant in the grand scheme of Jewish history.  The shtetls and ghettos existed, of course, but they were never self-imposed until the Haskallah (Jewish Enlightenment), when the Chatam Sopher, with his banner of “chadash assur min ha’Torah” (a pun deriving from a Talmudic ruling about new grain being forbidden before the grain sacrifice called the Korban Omer, used cleverly to prohibit the exposure to new Enlightenment, specifically Reform, philosophy and thought), decided to forsake a crucial element of Judaism in favor of isolationism.  Whether it was the Rabbis of the Talmud debating entry into a Roman bathhouse, the Rambam appropriating Aristotelian logic for proofs of God’s existence, or Rav Soloveitchik citing the Kierkegaardian leap of faith in an essay, the Jewish faith has not only been in constant dialogue with secular thought and culture, but it has shared its input and unique perspective on relevant issues with the world at large, often even integrating the most contemporary ideas into its very core tenets and principles, without compromising tradition.  And that, to me, is the beauty of Judaism’s “time consciousness,” as the Rav described it.  We do not remain, like much of the Bnei Brak community, entrenched in outmoded beliefs and rituals, turning our religion into a kitschy remnant of the past, turning everything modern and new into contagions, but rather, our chain of tradition has been just that, a chain, that has not ruptured under the pressures of modernity, but has expanded and thrived with the passage of time, remaining perpetually important to all who choose to be a part of it, and even those who don’t.

            Something in the nature of the religion necessitates this type of a relationship with the world, whether you chock it up to the emphasis on intellectual pursuits, commandments like “love thy neighbor” or tikkun olam (literally repairing the world), or simply an inherent tenacity built from years of perseverance in the face of oppression, there is no ignoring that the Jewish religion exists in conjunction with the world around it, not in opposition.  This is why learning cannot exist in a bubble, why Halakha, by its nature, is contextualized both within the wisdom of ancient texts and the most current philosophies.  By the very fact that Halakha is both a system of action (the Hebrew word Halakha is derived from the root meaning “walk”) and a subject of study, it necessitates the fusion of the maaseh (deed) and the learning behind it.  The ideas behind Halakha don’t gain meaning until they are implemented and experienced by the individual, and the actions themselves don’t pave the path to personal meaning until they are studied.  What arises when one does not shirk their duties to both study and live Halakha is a unique consciousness, a part of which the Rav described in the quote above, that perpetuates itself, that imbues actions with insights and brings insights into the realm of actions.

Thanks,

Kal

Experience and Questioning -- Kal Victor

Experience and Questioning -- Kal Victor

           

As time has gone by here at Yeshivat Maaleh Gilboa, and as I’ve continued learning Torah, Talmud, theology, and philosophy in the Beit Midrash, I’ve noticed that while I can be dazzled by a certain insight into the psyche of Moshe in the weekly Torah portion, passionately incensed by a finicky Talmudic argument about hashavat aveida (returning lost objects), or inspired to introspection and self-evaluation by a Chasidic allegory, when I come to reflect upon any of my lessons, I’m often left with a prickly sensation of self-distraction, the feeling that, while the knowledge I’ve accumulated thus far is all well and good, I’ve been ignoring some broader, grander questions looming in my mind. 

Part of the reason why this feeling is so baffling is that I can never seem to express those bigger questions concretely.  Sometimes it’s a matter of characterizing and justifying the relationship between ethics, Halakha, and the Divine; sometimes it’s a matter of defining a perception of God and faith in a modern world; sometimes it’s the thought that my entire vantage point is skewed, that my questions and the assumptions underlying them need to be drastically reexamined and reformulated; sometimes it’s as simple as how to internalize the experiences of this year, how to make sure they won’t remain suspended in time in a “gap year” that seems to be treated so often as a deferral of the progression of life, rather than the link in the chain of my personal evolution I hope it to be. 

When I try to pin down the exact source of this uneasy feeling that sometimes disturbs my learning, to find out why exactly I feel so existentially fidgety, I encounter an often unnavigable muck of worry, uncertainty, internal paradoxes, doubt, and desire—all my struggles and issues which seem to mix together into one overwhelming, amorphous angst, angst that I’m avoiding something that I should have been confronting as soon as I got here, that I’ve been shirking my responsibility to engage and grapple with what really matters.

I think, in many ways, that this phenomenon is actually a reflection of my impatience to reach a long sought-after intellectual maturity, the kind where I finally have the ability to cut through the formalism in my learning and reach the real substance.  But in other, often more striking ways, it represents to me the opposite, the fact that I haven’t yet learned to really learn, to look at a source and take it for what it is in its own right, not focused on what it represents or how to make it mine.  It is not that those two latter things aren’t extraordinarily important, because contextualizing and internalizing knowledge is essential in all learning, especially limud Torah, but if I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that you gain nothing from a text if you force it through a presupposed intellectual filter, reading only to verify your own assumptions and boost your ego.

            But, thankfully, I’ve had much time to think about all of this, time to pick the brains of some of the greatest thinkers of all time, time to engage my caring, attentive, and perceptive teachers, friends and family, and hopefully, some of what I’ve learned will come to light in the rest of my musings here.  Something that’s becoming clearer to me throughout this process is that articulating the right questions is just as important as finding the answers, even more so in the sense that answers are only as meaningful as the questions that incite them.  Recently, I came across this passage from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet (http://www.carrothers.com/rilke4.htm), that added an entirely new dimension to this insight: 

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

            The idea that somehow questioning, learning, and experiencing are all deeply intertwined is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.  Rilke’s words had a powerful impact on me, and their messages have only been echoed and enhanced by my other learning here in Yeshiva.  Rebbe Nachman, someone who I never encountered before this year, but who has provided me with many fascinating insights into Torah and faith, allegedly gave his students the task of learning one torah (a piece in his book of teachings, Likutei Moharan) everyday for one month and keeping a journal with two halves: one to see how the world around you seems to conform to lessons learned from the torah, and one to examine how the torah itself seems to conform to things learned from the world around you.  While I’ve never done anything like that, in a similar vein, I always enjoy tying in the themes of different shiurim, which tends to happen almost organically a lot of the time.  I always try to seek out how what I’ve learned can be relevant to my life, but many times it seems to prove itself on its own accord.  Hopefully this will make itself evident in the thoughts and Divrei Torah I’m going to share now.

Recently, Rabbi David Silber of Drisha, a feminist Orthodox beit midrash, came to visit and gave a fascinating shiur on Shmot (he’s written a really great Haggadah, too, which I strongly recommend).  He has a very literary approach, which I’m kind I’m partial to, and it is worth sharing for its emphatic simplicity and the ideas it engendered, which maybe I can embellish a little bit.

The theme of the talk by Rabbi Silber was “yedia” (knowledge) in sepher Shmot.  After citing numerous examples of the usage of the root Y.D.’ in the story of Shmot, most notably as it pertained to Pharaoh (i.e Shmot 5:2 and 1:8), he proceeded to ask what sort of yedia we are supposed to take away from the story of the Exodus.  In short, his answer was that we are supposed to gain empathy, empathy for the oppressed and the weak, the stranger and the pariah.  In Parshat Mishpatim, which follows in the Torah soon after the relating of the Exodus story, God cites our past suffering as a reason for numerous ethical commandments.  The inui (suffering) and avdut (slavery) that Bnei Yisrael experience are described in the brit bein ha’betarim (covenant between the pieces) with Avraham as something foretold for our future, a prerequisite to the other parts of the bargain --  involving our freedom, leaving in great wealth, etc.  Only after we had underwent the entire journey from slavery to freedom, grounding our success in the humbleness of our beginnings, were we ready and able to receive the law, to understand commandments regarding the treatment of the less fortunate and the other in society. 

One of Rabbi Silber’s most fascinating comments was that we really need to turn to Yitro in chapter 18 of Shmot to internalize this lesson. In 18:11, Yitro expresses his own form of yedia, “now I know that Hashem is greater than all the other gods.”  But at the beginning of the perek (chapter) the narrative tells us that Yitro had previously heard, “vayishma,” about all of the wonders and miracles done by the Hebrew God.  If he had heard about all of the mighty deeds of Hashem already, why is it that he waits until verse 11 to proclaim a form of definite yedia that Hashem is supreme?  The truth is, he had heard about all of the Israelites successes and miracles, but it’s Moshe’s revelation of the defeat of Amalek that really clinches Yitro’s belief in Hashem.  Yitro learns to see Hashem as not only powerful and vengeful, but as the savior of the oppressed, as well, who, on the “derekh” (way) from Egypt (verse 8) were attacked by the ruthless Amalekites, who always prey on the weak and the weary.  It is specifically here, after learning that God is the champion of the underdog, when Yitro can proclaim his yedia and “vayichad,” he rejoiced.  He had originally heard what is generally depicted of deities by most religions of that time—that they perform amazing, nature-defying spectacles of strength, that they are great and triumphant—but his real yedia, his real acceptance of God comes from the knowledge that God defends the downtrodden.  He knew that Moshe lived by that justice-seeking ideology, because of what he did for his daughters at the well, and now he verified that Moshe’s God does the same. 

An idea learned in a parsha shiur for Bo with one of the Roshei Yeshiva, Rabbi Yehuda Gilad, seemed to fit in very well with Rabbi Silber’s talk.  Rav Yehuda spoke about an inconsistency in the text surrounding the commandment for the eating of matza that is reflected in how matza is defined within the Haggadah.  He began by addressing the fact that the commandment for eating matza is found in the text before the event of the Exodus actually occurs.  In Shmot 12:8, in the midst of the commandments for the rituals of the Pesach Seder, matza is mentioned, only to be readdressed in 12:39.  But rather than citing the previous commandment as the reason for the obligation to eat matza, the narrative cites the one we all are familiar with: because, in the haste of leaving Egypt, the bread of the Israelites didn’t have time to rise.  Although, oddly enough, the commandment to eat matza precedes its coming into existence as an event in history, we don’t cite the commandment in the Pesach Haggadah, but rather the reason found in 12:39.  The question is: which reason was it?  Did the ancient Israelites eat matza because they were commanded to, or because the circumstances of the Exodus demanded it?

Rav Yehuda’s answer was fascinating.  Contextualized within the broader narrative of the Torah, chapter 12 of Shmot is the first time the historical account of the Israelites, told in the form of a story, breaks to allow for the direct commandment of laws, here regarding the Pesach Seder.  Rav Yehuda claimed that the commandment was intentionally repeated and the origins of matza deliberately blurred, in order to demonstrate the merger of the God of our history and development with the God of our laws and statutes—the God of our past and the God of our future.  Regardless of whether you think of the biblical narrative as a collection of parables and lessons, an accurate account of history or some sort of fusion of the two, it’s clear that the story of the Exodus is meant to occupy the psychological niche of a joint “memory” belonging to the Jewish people.  God wants to emphasize here that the “memories” of the Torah and the actual commandments are one fluid entity, that He commanded matza before it happened historically specifically to demonstrate that His mitzvoth are commanded because of what will happen—not just because of what has happened—and that the Torah, its stories and its law, are eternal and transcendent. 

I think that Rav Yehuda’s insights added another important facet to the yedia we are supposed to gain from the Exodus and all of the commandments surrounding it, be they ethical or ritual.  The goal here is seemingly to create a sort of all-encompassing Torah consciousness, where morals flow seamlessly from the past—its stories and narratives—to the future, with enduring commandments passed on through a tradition meant to preserve this unique state of mind and foster the natural inclination to help others, especially those less fortunate.  This is why we have the commandment to remember the Exodus twice daily; this is why God continually cites it as a reason for mitzvoth, even when reasons for commandments are so seldom offered; this is why the Pesach Seder is such an iconic, timeless ritual that even unaffiliated Jews seem to cling to as an expression of their identities.

            Many people, just as I have, struggle with what it means to “know God,” have faith, and find meaning.  The Rav Shagar (z’’l), a fascinating thinker whom I also just found out about this year (one of our classes, by his son-in-law, Zevik Kitzis,, is devoted to his writings), deals with an offshoot of this question: the tension between post-modernism and religion. He aims, by embracing what many call neo-chasidut and other modern philosophical tenets, to find the opportunity for a stronger faith within the seeming existential predicament (a bio: http://www.siach.org.il/Contents.asp?pageName=Rav+Shagar+ZT%22L&pageID=347).

It seems to me, and here I’ll attempt to address some of the same questions that Rav Shagar dealt with, that religious experience has become increasingly important in an intellectual framework where what used to be basic assumptions about the world and the way it works don’t always hold up.  This is what occurs under the scrutiny of a post-modern lens.  While I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about post-modernism, one thing that does resonate with me is its emphasis on pluralism (I’ll talk more about this later), which makes having an absolute faith in God and Halakhah—knowledge that they are true, (i.e Rambam’s view of religion)—very hard to sustain.  “Absolute faith” has always struck me as a rather oxymoronic concept—faith is something that is, by its nature, a leap, something that cannot be proven in objective terms.  This is where a shift to experience, rather than logical proofs as the foundation of a religious life seems to be essential.  To be clear, I don’t disparage those that view faith in the same way the Rambam did, and in fact, a lot of the meaning I find in Judaism is built on ideas espoused by him, like searching for purposes and reasons in mitzvoth, for example (although, without getting into specifics, we certainly differ in how much stake is put into this quest).  And genuine religious experience is something that’s hard to come by these days, making its modern status as a prerequisite for religious observance, as I think many people naturally expect, problematic to the religious, Halakhic lifestyle.  But what I mean here by religious experience is not only referring to those moments where an individual can really feel the presence of God in the mystical sense (Rav Bigman always quotes Emanuel Levinas about believing in the mystique of God, not the mysticism of God, meaning a belief in His transcendence, not necessarily in a magical sense, but rather a metaphysical sense; but that is another discussion), but also to something much more communal, much more effable.  I am talking about the religious experience of our history, our collective consciousness that has been birthed by the study of the same sacred texts and a focus on the same values (more or less), as alluded to above.  Yetztiat Mitzraim takes on an even more significant role within the post-modern age.  In a world ripe with moral relativism, sometimes the mere commandment to open your arms to the stranger in your midst doesn’t quite cut it for some people, practically speaking.  But as soon as you’ve experienced something that can produce a real, human emotion that you cannot deny, you can have true conviction.  We must first be slaves before we are worthy of receiving the Torah because God knows that the only way for his ethical and moral commandments to truly resonate with His people, the only way to produce the empathy needed to sustain those laws, is to ground them in experience—an eternal, immutable collective memory, history, and intellectual tradition.  In the same way Rilke called for experience and living in order to truly imbue meaning in questioning and learning, so too does God desire that one’s life and one’s learning feed off each other in a beautiful symbiosis, one that grounds thought in feelings and feeling in thoughts.

Discovering Eretz Yisrael through the Seasons

ב”ה

Discovering Eretz Yisrael through the Seasons by Idan Bergman

            How abundant are Your works, HASHEM; with wisdom You made them all; the earth is full of Your possessions (Tehillim 103:24). After living at Ma’ale Gilboa for close to five months, I for the first time understand what the psalmist means here in his praise to HASHEM. I have seen the abundance in God works: the field of wild flowers on the side of the mountain, the group of grazing cattle in the valley, and the row of enormous mountains beyond the horizon. As the year has gone by, I have slowly come to take notice of the simply indescribable that is necessary to create all these magnificent creations, and as a result I can now acknowledge that all that I have seen is from the living God.

            Recognizing that our surroundings always stem from the living God is indeed one way of performing our duty in life of forming a relationship with God. The God that the Jewish people believe in is one that is in human, physical aspects--invisible. However, we on the other hand believe that God constantly leaves impressions in this world that we can see, or in other words, perceive. As such, the only way to perceive God and thus form a relationship with Him; to speak to Him, ask from Him, and even cry to Him, is through these impressions he leaves for us. In use, these impressions act as a frame of reference for us of the Divine. We humans can only fathom God through our human understanding, and us such we require a reference point similar to ourselves--something physical--in order to relate to God in our words, thoughts, prayers. If not for always attributing God for these impressions, then our intrinsic relationship with God would completely sever. God would lose His place in the world we live in, the world where are body and spirit abide, and we would lose our ability to refer to God. For this reason it is important to recognize in this world that God creates, that he continues to be, and that his creations continue to bear his name. Constant belief of God’s eternal presence in this world ensures the everlasting relationship with God as the Holy One and the Creator, constantly with us and our surroundings.